An illegal immigrant was arrested earlier this month for sexually assaulting an underage girl.
The illegal, 19-year-old Sergio Leodan Morales Soto from Guatemala, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on April 5 after his connecting flight from Atlanta, Ga. was delayed due to weather problems. Soto was attempting to leave the United States.
The sexual assault was reported on April 4 by the underage girl and her family in Marydel, Md.; investigators eventually determined that he had taken a flight from Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport to Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Because the flight was delayed, ICE was able to board the connecting flight in Atlanta and arrest Soto.
Soto has been extradited to Caroline County in Maryland, where he faces charges of “first and second degree rape, sex offense of the first, second and third degree and second degree assault.” According to investigators, “the assault was not random.”
ICE told an ABC affiliate in Maryland that Soto was illegally residing in the U.S.
Soto is not the only illegal immigrant to be recently arrested for a sexually assaulting an underage girl. Forty-year-old Oscar Perez-Rangel allegedly sexually assaulted a 12 year-old girl multiple times. Perez-Rangel had been illegally residing in the country despite facing being previously deported.
What makes such crimes particularly infuriating is that they would never have occurred if immigration laws were simply being fully enforced. These heinous acts highlight how crucial it is to secure the border and properly enforce the nation’s immigration laws.
H/T: The Right Scoop